When most people think of ASUS, they immediately think of the "ROG" product line, one that has set itself apart from the rest due to extensive functionality, and top-level overclocking ability. however, ASUS does have a few other products out there that offer the same, if not more, and the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe that recently arrived on our doorstep is definitely one of those products. Boasting ASUS's improved "Dual Intelligent Processors III" VRM design, the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe offers performance customization abilities that few other products do, easily setting it apart form the rest.

Great quality pics of what matters. Heatsink removal and pics of interface contact is awesome. That kind of detail helps me decide if I need to remove heatsinks to inspect for proper contact. You've done the work for those anal types like me.

uh..yeah. You know, I had no choice but to change it up a bit. Until X79, Codemasters showed decent performance differences between products, brought on by BIOS-level tweaking done by the OEMs. Codemasters games are highly ram-intensive.

However, X79 seem to finally provide more than enough bandwidth for Codemasters titles. It's finally all about the GPU, and not so much memory bandwidth, that affects the results.

Shogun, on the other hand, is pretty CPU/Mem-dependant, being not very multi-threaded.

More changes to the benchmarks are coming. I'm already benching several other apps, but I haven't quite got all the old boards benched yet.

Great quality pics of what matters. Heatsink removal and pics of interface contact is awesome. That kind of detail helps me decide if I need to remove heatsinks to inspect for proper contact. You've done the work for those anal types like me.

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EXACTLY why I do it. When i started doing reviews, heatsink contact was a critical thing, and in many instances, VRM coolers didn't touch MOSFETS properly. Today, a year later, nearly every board is perfect....so perfect, in fact, I'm getting to the point where I don't even want to remove the coolers, but I'm never gonna stop now.

EXACTLY why I do it. When i started doing reviews, heatsink contact was a critical thing, and in many instances, VRM coolers didn't touch MOSFETS properly. Today, a year later, nearly every board is perfect....so perfect, in fact, I'm getting to the point where I don't even want to remove the coolers, but I'm never gonna stop now.

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Yea I'm seeing the same trend, better contact and better TIM material now than in years past. One of my criteria, no plastic for heatsink retention. If a mobo doesn't use screws or bolts, it's off my list. It's a combination of a quality heatsink, quality TIM, and proper retention that lead proper contact. Your pics show that all are being used, and the evidence is the uniform impression left in the VRM thermal pad. Thanks again..

I have to say i do not see the logic in having a heat sink hovering right above the VTT power phases and not sticking a thermal pad between them, is the heatsink hotter than the components it could be cooling?

If the components were hotter than the heatsink could some thermal tape bridge the gap, possibly the thicker kind which is used on the other heat sinks?

Apart from the USB3 performance and the PCIe slot speed arrangement's, both of which are non issue to me i really like this board and looks to be a viable option for an LGA2011 platform, i really like the fact that when using one RAM module per channel it is the slots farthest away from the socket which need to be used.

As far as your photography Dave i would like you to look at this

compared to your work

I cut off the watermark on the first picture as i'm not trying to say the site where the pic came from sucks at taking pictures, what i am saying is i see so many reviews from so many sites with pictures that are blinded by a flash or really low res or even blurry, you do great work with the photographs.

My image there is a bit yellow, but that was the backdrop, which i have now replaced.

I have found that lighting and camera settings are key. Get teh rtight light for the camera, and pics can be awesome. Using tripod gets rid of most blurriness, but focal distance can affect that too.

That said, these are jsut soem things I noticed, as before doing reviews, I never really took many pictures. In fact, I didn't even own a camera, but my wife did. The camera I use was very cheap ~$150 USD, but again, I didn't choose it...I had issues finding a good one, and Gary took care of all of that for me. I gotta give credit where it's due.

My image there is a bit yellow, but that was the backdrop, which i have now replaced.

I have found that lighting and camera settings are key. Get teh rtight light for the camera, and pics can be awesome. Using tripod gets rid of most blurriness, but focal distance can affect that too.

That said, these are jsut soem things I noticed, as before doing reviews, I never really took many pictures. In fact, I didn't even own a camera, but my wife did. The camera I use was very cheap ~$150 USD, but again, I didn't choose it...I had issues finding a good one, and Gary took care of all of that for me. I gotta give credit where it's due.

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I never even noticed that it was off white although i do have my monitors set to "cool" and are cheap panels so i doubt the colours are accurate.

Thanks to Gary for his part in helping you create pictures good enough tempt me in to buying things that don't even fit my needs.

But what do you think about the VTT power phases, do you think it would make sense for the heat sink above them to have a thermal pad on to cool them?

I'm seriously considering getting an LGA2011 board with a 8 core ivy bridge CPU with the intent of it lasting me at least 3 years so i assume the best possible cooling on every component possible will help keep things working as long as possible and the fact there is a heat sink right above 2 power phases but not making contact just does not make sense to me unless the heat sink is hotter than the components.

But even then i intend to have a fan directly over the CPU socket blowing down while using water cooling with angled connections for the tubing so at least in that situation would it make sense to add a thermal pad for those phases?

Or more importantly do you think thick thermal tape could bridge the gap?

the gap is fairly large, 2-3 millimeters. A pad could bridge the gap, but no, i do not see any reason to do so.

The heatpipe of the cooler passes directly over the chipset, so any heat absorbed by that cooler would in turn increase chipset temps.

Where cooling is critical is on the main CPU power area, which can get super hot. The NH-C14 I use blows directly on them, but that air is also warmed by the cooler, too.

200 MHz more on OC is a big number. I can only attribute this to temperatures, and I did try many many mounts to ensure each board had the best cooling possible. I also added two 140mm fans blowing down at the board itself, with one cooling the SB area, and moved the VGA to the lower slot so I could get more cooling on the VTT area. There was no difference in OC by cooling this area better on this board. It did have a slight impact on the other two boards I have, but those boards have a heatpipe that joins the SB cooler with the VRM cooler.

Honestly i hope to not want to overclock to start with, if i go from a phenom II to an LGA2011 ivy bridge 8 core surly the jump in power would more than enough to have no reason to overclock other than for benchmark scores?

At least to start with my main concern is keeping everything as cool as possible to try and help with component lifetime, i'm sure keeping everything as cool as possible wont make a massive difference on lifetime but i intend for it to be on 24/7 so i just assume the cooler the better.

Something i could not tell from the pictures is where the heat pipe went in to the second heatsink, i thought i might have gone through the middle of the fins thus adding a fan may cool it enough for it not to effect the chipset but if the heat pipe is against the heat sink base that alone would make me wonder if it is a good idea but then as its a 3mm gap it's probably is better just to have the air flowing over the components than that much thermal material so i can understand the design now.

As i'm willing to spend whatever it takes on a new platform i will probably be asking many more random questions through all your LGA2011 board reviews.

One thing which i assume i cannot know yet is which boards will support ivy bridge CPUs as correct me if i'm wrong it will be down to BIOS updates? i assume most if not all boards that are possible to do so will get a new BIOS released but is there not a BIOS size limitation so some "hybrid UEFI" boards can't be updated for ivy bridge due to the BIOS chip being too small for a true UEFI bios? I don't know where i read this and am too drunk to find out

I do not have exact info on future products at this time. What I can say is that every Intel X79 Express board I have seen supports PCIe 3.0, which should be the only requirement currently for Ivy-bridge support.

As mentioned, I am also using this board for memory reviews right now, so I'll be sure to be staying on top of any updates that may affect functionality, including looking at PCIe 3.0 devices when they become available.

If you are not overclocking, a standard case install should provide more than adequate cooling. The issues with cooling stem from overclocking, and the fact these CPUs can consume an easy 250 W, even @ just 4.4 GHz. I would really suggest to those looking for long term overclocks over 4.0 GHz, that they use watercooling with a block on the board's VRMs as well. But at stock, the 130 W consumed doesn't have that large of an impact.

And that applies to any board, not just the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe. If anything, the large coolers used on the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe make cooling less of an issue than with some other products.